Close Encounters

Hyde under water!

Where's the path gone

Windrush bridge -above welly level

A little too wet to permit any Ranger work this week but armed with wellies, camera, binos went down to the water meadows [Lake!] on a sunny! friday. I was expecting the water meadows to be a little damp but was still surprised by how much water there actually was even though on the track down the newly formed stream gave a clue.  On reaching the water meadows I decided on taking the path towards the 'hyde' first and carefully paddled down the flooded path. Half way down I disturbed a large   bird which flew right in front of me and was my first sighting of a short eared owl since earlier this year. It flew across the meadows and perched on a convenient post in the middle of the meadow. After a couple of pictures {still too far for my telephoto} I waded on towards the hyde.  No more wildlife sightings so I backtracked towards the windrush. Crossed over to the Barrington estate side and was treated to another close fly by of a red kite this followed by another spot of a short eared owl in a large tree not too far from the field I had seen 4 owls February this year.  On my return journey I spotted a hare basking in the sun, obviously the weasel I spotted last week in this area not quite fast enough to catch this fleet footed prey.

This week marked the end of wildwood and maybe wishful thinking on my part but it did get me thinking about missed opportunities in the NT managed woods. Given the skill of the Rangers {assuming they reach Mike/Martin standards} charcoal, hazel supports for plants, quality wood for furniture all look to be under developed sources of revenue given some decent resource planning. Added to this, given available time from the Rangers, would of course be us volunteers! Sort of connected to this was a really good Mark Avery guest Blog  Dr David Gibbons, which introduced the idea of a conservation impact metric. This gets to the nub of my conservation frustrations which is to get good science better connected to application by practitioners. Agriculture environment schemes are but one aspect of this.